Interview with James Horn

The History of the Americans

Dr. James Horn is President and Chief Officer of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) at Historic Jamestowne. Previously, he has served as Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and taught for twenty years at the University of Brighton, England. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary, and Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

A leading scholar of early Virginia and English America, Dr. Horn is the author and editor of numerous books and articles including three that we have leaned on extensively in this podcast, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America; 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy; and most recently A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. (I’ll get a little tip if you buy them through the links above.)

Our conversation focuses on the extraordinary life of Opechancanough, the fascinating man who twice led the Powhatan Confederacy in wars to expel English settlers from the James River and the Chesapeake. As longstanding and attentive listeners know, Opechancanough may or may not have been the same man as Paquiquineo, taken by the Spanish in the Chesapeake in 1561, received in the court of Philip II, christened Don Luis de Velasco in Mexico City, and returned to his homeland in 1570. Jim persuades me that Opechancanough was, in fact, the same man. Along the way I learn, a bit too late, how to pronounce various names properly.

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